Zhang Xiaogang

signed in Chinese and Pinyin, and dated 1995, framed

Beijing, Sungari International Auction, 6-8 September, 1996, lot 26
Private Asian Collection
Acquired by the present owner from the above

China, Beijing, Sungari International Auction Co., Reality: Present and Future - 96' Chinese Contemporary Art, 6 December - 8 December, 1996, unpaginated
France, Paris, Espace Cardin, Paris-Pékin, 5-28 October, 2002, p. 253

Lü Peng, 90s Art China 1990-1999, Hunan Fine Arts Publishing House, Changsha, China, 2000, p. 13
Paris-Pékin: Exposition, Beaux Arts Collection, Turin, Italy, 2002, p. 44

This work is generally in good condition. Having examined the work under ultraviolet light, there appears to be no evidence of restoration.
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Traces of History
Zhang Xiaogang

Within the development of Chinese contemporary art, the Bloodline series by Zhang Xiaogang is arguably the most iconic body of works to reveal the hidden trauma of contemporary China. Developed from a long string of painting explorations during the 1980s intricately tied to China’s processing of the Western painting tradition, the Bloodline series certainly mark the pinnacle of Zhang Xiaogang’s early mature style, and remain to be a fundamental influence in Zhang’s later artistic practice. Sotheby’s is pleased to present one of the most significant examples of the series, the rare Bloodline Series: Family Portrait (Lot 1038) from 1995. Featuring the signatory three family member portrait, the seminal work belongs to a core group of paintings that brilliantly reveals the transitional phase of the legendary series. While it is popularly known as Bloodline: The Big Family, its initial title was in fact Bloodline: Family Portrait. During 1995, Zhang began to experiment with the scale and title of the Bloodline series, producing five large-scale works entitled Bloodline: Big Family that were subsequently shown at the Venice Biennale and Haus der Kulturen das Welt in Hamburg, Germany. While these works would signify a new period of the series, it is the present painting, created in the same year, that proves to be ever more fundamental in reflecting the origin and spirit of the first Family Portrait produced in 1993.

Zhang gave birth to the Bloodline series in the summer of 1993 in Kunming, and the paintings were first exhibited in December of that year in the seminal exhibition “Chinese Art in the 1990’s: Experiences of China” at the Sichuan Art Museum in Chengdu.  The five-man exhibition, curated by the art critic Wang Lin, also included works by Mao Xuhui, Ye Yongqing, Wang Chuan, and Zhou Chunya. It marked the culmination of the avant-garde movement formerly known as the “Southwestern Art Group.”  Zhang Xiaogang exhibited ten paintings, including Family Portrait, a realistically proportioned portrait of a three-person family that may have been his own.  They appear thin and frail against a background that was not yet rendered with chiaroscuro seen in his later works; a stark light shines in blocks upon the sitters, a precursor to the discoloured patches that would be seen in his future Bloodline series. This piece was later titled Bloodline: Family and was collected by the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum marking this as the first time Zhang's work was collected by an international institution.

Based on his own family portrait, the present work on offer displays a family of three, a young father and mother with their boy, solemnly staring out of the canvas. The scholarly father is a figure that frequently appears in the Bloodline series, not only alluding to Zhang’s own father, but with his uniform, representing the collective homogeneous spirit of the Chinese population during Cultural Revolution. The iconic composition of the three member family also pertains to the one-child policy structure advocated by the Chinese government. The yellow boy, as seen in many of Zhang’s later works, precisely pinpoints to the significance of having a son as opposed to a daughter. Parallel with the passing down of heritage and blood lineage, the thin red bloodline reveals these intricate connections between the parents and the child, fully exemplifying the exceptional spirit of the series. 

Born in 1958 in Kunming and graduated from Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts in 1982, Zhang Xiaogang had gone through several major exploratory periods before finally gaining the iconic status as one of the top contemporary Chinese artists with his breakthrough Bloodline: Big Family series. Inspired in the beginning by the works of Van Gogh, Zhang had experienced predominantly with Western artistic currents such as expressionism in his early career, most notably represented by his graduation work Grassland. The period immediately following his graduation from 1982 to 1985 was famously coined by the artist as the “Dark Era”. During this time, he suffered from depression and ill health after being rejected from a teaching position at his alma mater and had no choice but to work as an “art designer” at the Kunming Opera Troupe. His subsequent alcohol abuse had led to his eventual two- month hospitalisation for alcohol-caused stomach bleeding. It was during these two months on the hospital bed that Zhang finally had a quiet unperturbed moment to self-reflect on his private feelings and his fear of death. The ghost-like patients witnessed by the artist and the motif of dreams also became a powerful source of inspiration for his works produced after 1984, such as the Phantom and Lost Dream series. In a way, the origin of the lifeless emotion and surreal dream-like flair as seen in the figures of the Bloodline: Big Family series can certainly be attributed to this life changing experience.

While the themes of his works in the 1980s and early 90s focused primarily on depicting dreamy soliloquies in expressionistic and surrealist styles, it was truly the political turmoil of 1989 that had awakened Zhang Xiaogang to reality. “I had some serious reflections and wrote many things. I felt that if I continued to paint in the same way, I could become one of a million people imitating Western art. However good I was at this, I could only distinguish myself among copycats. I still wouldn’t be a true and independent artist.”  In this malaise and disorientation, Zhang received a timely invitation to the University of Kassel for a short-temp academic exchange, and in May 1993 left for Germany, where his wife Tang Lei was studying. He could not have foreseen the influence of this brief sojourn on his subsequent artistic career.

During his three months in Germany, Zhang Xiaogang spent all his days in museums studying the works of Western painters. Secretly he even visited France and the Netherlands (to which countries he had no entry visas). He was humbled by masters like Van Gogh and Magritte and fascinated by contemporary German artists like Beuys, Kiefer, Baselitz, and Richter, the last of whom would exert a particularly profound influence on him. At the same time, Zhang was also disappointed by the complete “bourgeoisation” of contemporary art. He was particularly saddened by that year’s Documenta, which he later professed he completely failed to understand. In later letters to his friends Wang Lin and Ye Yongqing, he wrote, “Westerners are tired from playing this game [of contemporary art]. Many people have lost their direction and begun to play with themselves… This exhibition was nothing more than an opportunity for Westerners to spend money.”

Exposure to foreign cultures also caused Zhang Xiaogang to think more deeply about his position as a Chinese artist. “I looked from the ‘early phase’ to the present for a position for myself, but even after this I still didn’t know who I was. But an idea did emerge clearly: if I continue being an artist, I have to be an artist of ‘China.’” The identity of a “Chinese artist” had never occurred so clearly in Zhang’s mind. In a letter to Ye Yongqing, he wrote, “As of now, there is no such thing as contemporary Chinese culture in the West. They perhaps prefer to see it as a ‘primitive culture’ in the same way they buy African wood sculptures... Or perhaps they prefer to view the contemporary cultures of the Third World from a colonial perspective, proclaiming ‘inclusiveness.’ What Chinese contemporary culture truly is only we have an inkling, but we have yet to find clear concepts and images to show it to the world. This goal can only be achieved through the efforts of the Chinese.”